If its one thing that makes ecommerce owners salivate it’s the possibility of sourcing a hot selling product which has developed a great deal of buzz for a really low wholesale price.

So with the insatiable demand surrounding the iPad now there must be at least a handful of resellers scouring places like Alibaba and Aliexpress looking for discount Apple iPads that they can sell through their own networks for a hefty fee.

But why is there so much buzz surrounding the iPad? After all it’s not like we haven’t seen this techology before.

Whether or not the iPad is an oversized smart phone or an undersized laptop (though calling a device with a 9.7″ screen an undersized laptop does prove to be a stretch of the imagination) is not even the issue. Slate computing has been around since 2001 or 2007 depending on whether you are referring to the larger tablet computer or the smaller MID.

It could also be argued that the current batch of eBooks essentially does the same job.

Paul Saffo, a writer and technology forecaster in Silicon Valley and visiting scholar at Stanford University probably put it best with his comment on a PBS talk show (pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june10/ipad_04-05.html):

What they have done is, they have legitimated a whole new space of a device…

The important thing is that it’s Apple doing the introduction. And this is a company that has lots of true believers, because they have a track record of delivering truly new things.

Whether they are true believers or sheeple is something best left up to the fanboys to debate but it is undoubtable that there is a lot of buzz surrounding the Apple iPad.

With the iPad going for a starting price of 499USD, between 600,000 and 700,000 being sold in the first day and a search over Alibaba revealling ‘iPad’ models for between US$100 and US$300 you might be forgiven for thinking that this is the opening of an eBay resellers’ goldmine.

A quick look over the wide variation in iPad models though very quickly reveal the truth.

IPads do not run off an Intel Atom chip nor do they have a 160GB memory. The screen size is 9.7 inches, not 10 inches, not 8 inches or any other variation and it does not come with a camera.

Just for clarification these are the iPad specifications which have been taken directly from the iPod product page

Physical Dimensions

Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)

Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)

Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)

Weight:

1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) Wi-Fi model;

1.6 pounds (0.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

9.7-inch widescreen Multi-Touch display

1024-by-768-pixel resolution

Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n)

Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology

UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz) (WiFi + 3G model)

GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) (WiFi + 3G model)

16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive

1GHz Apple A4 Chip

Audio formats supported:

HE-AAC (V1)

AAC (16 to 320 Kbps)

Protected AAC (from iTunes Store)

MP3

AIFF

WAV

Video Formats

H.264 video

MPEG-4

Motion JPEG (M-JPEG)

Doc Files Compatibility

jpg

tiff

gif

doc, docx

htm, html

pdf

ppt, pptx

txt

rtf

vcf

xls, xlsx

Languages

English

French

German

Japanese

Dutch

Italian

Spanish

Simplified Chinese

Russian

Box Contents

iPad

Dock Connector to USB Cable

10W USB Power Adapter

Documentation

But even if the specifications match up you’re not exactly home and hosed with a trustable supplier.

The truth of the matter is that, for people looking to source cheap iPads, they will probably need to go through Apple.

While these products probably, but aren’t necessarily bad (and may be adequate slate computers in their own right) they aren’t going to be Apple iPads.

And if a manufacturer is prepared to scam you by saying that their product is someone elses what else are they trying to do?

If you’ve dealt with Chinavasion you’ll know that scam isn’t our vocabulary and how sad we are that such scams are going on within the industry. So we urge resellers to take care, support reputable China wholesale companies like Chinavasion, scam companies shouldn’t profit from their misrepresentations.

6 Comments

When I look at other Chinese suppliers to add to my product line I get nervous when I see what appears to be ‘name brand’ products, if they sell knock-offs can I trust anything they sell. The reason I trust Chinavasion is because I know what you sell is described accurately and correctly. I don’t need to test or sample every product I add to my line. I can drop-ship anything you wholesale anywhere and be sure my reputation is maintained and my customers will be happy.

wow! thanks for the info, I haven’t taken advantage of the great wholesale supply yet as I am still unsure what to do in terms of delivering excellence as a seller on ebay. but to know that chinavision is against scamming has built my confidence in dealing with your company. thanks heaps

Chinavasion Is A EXCELLENT company to do business with I dropship thru my online store and my customers keep growing by the day I havent had ANY problems wit chinavasion as far as customer service or delivery….I keep my customers happy and chinavasion keeps me happy.